After three years of deliberation, debate and delay, council voted 31-12 on Wednesday in favour of significant changes that will affect both passengers and everyone involved in the complex industry.

Council rejected a more conservative slate of reforms that was favoured by council’s licensing committee — and the taxi brokerage companies that mounted a concerted lobbying effort.

Like all decisions on taxi matters, this one left some industry players ecstatic and some irate. The debate was held in front of a packed chamber of interested parties who wore green and orange t-shirts to signal their preferences.

The vote created a new kind of taxi licence, the Toronto Taxicab Licence (TTL), which all plate owners must obtain by 2024.

Everyone with a TTL will have to use a wheelchair-accessible vehicle. That means the city’s entire taxi fleet will be accessible within 10 years. Since accessible vehicles are expensive and since only a small percentage of riders require such vehicles, brokerage executives said the requirement imposes needless costs.

Taxi customers will soon see some other changes. Riders will be required to pay a $25 “soiling fee” if they vomit in a car. They will be forced to hand taxi drivers $25 up front if the driver feels it is “necessary.” And all taxis will have to use snow tires in the winter months.

Drivers and plate owners will likely be impacted more substantially than the average rider.

The TTL replaces the current two-tier system that involves “Standard” licences, which can be sold, and “Ambassador” licences that cannot be sold — and can only be used by their owners.

The changes are a boon to the Ambassador-holders, who can trade for a TTL as soon as July. They had complained bitterly that the old system did not let them take on a second driver even if they are sick or injured — and, unlike Standard owners, they did not have an asset they could sell to retire. The new system hurts those Standard owners, who paid up to $345,000 for an asset that may now be worth far less.

Anybody with a TTL has to be at least a part-time driver. That means the end of fleet garages and the absentee non-driver plate owners, who were called exploitative by several councillors on Wednesday. Shift drivers at the meeting said the owner-operator model would mean cleaner cars.

“I think this is a historic moment, when the industry is back in the hands of the people who are working 12 hours a day. The drivers have the industry back in their hands,” said Sajid Mughal, president of the iTaxiworkers Association, which represents some drivers.

Said Beck Taxi operations manager Kristine Hubbard: “I haven’t fully absorbed what all this means, but it’s going to hurt a lot of people. And I don’t know how many people it really helps.”

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